May 27, 2008

The Mis-Misinterpretations of PMBOK

Most of the ragging about PMBOK starts with the misinterpretation of the purpose and content of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. First it is not "The" Body of Knowledge, but "A" Body of Knowledge. Second it is not "The" Body of Knowledge, but a "Guide" to "A" Body of Knowledge. See the trend here. Most authors ragging on PMBOK appear to have trouble reading the title of the book.

Next comes the concept that PMBOK is a project management methodology. That is tells you how to manage a project. This not true. PMBOK is a guide to some good practices that shoudl be found in your project management method.

One simple approach to the application of PMBOK is to ask:

What process groups and knowledge areas would you NOT want to be found in your method of managing projects?

Would you NOT want to know how to do during your project (Knowledge Areas)?

Integrate the activities found in projects. Things like: chartering, preliminary scoping, developing a manage plan, directing and some how managing the project, monitoring and control the project in some way, managing the changes that occur during the project, or closing out the project once its over?

Or how about knowing the ways to: manage scope, manage the time aspects of a project, or the costs of doing the work, or the quality of the products or services produced by the project?

How about the human resource aspects of project work?

Maybe the communications issues associated with projects and the people working on projects?

When risk appears in project work, how about some methods of managing it?

When external materials are needed, wouldn't some good procurement processes be useful?

These are the knowledge areas of PMBOK. The current PMBOK uses a Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle. This provides the framework for managing the project using feedback and corrective action. It has been suggested that the thermostatic approach to project management is obsolete, without of course providing alternative. But more critically those making this suggestion have failed to understand the rudimentary aspects of the theory of control systems:

The system under control has the ability to be controlled in some way

Feedback from the current state of the system is available in some unit of measure useful to the controller. (The controller can be human or machine)

When "commanded" to do so the system can make changes in its behavior in response to the "command." (This command is not a military like command, but an input to the system that alters the output).

Now is when the confusion starts. ALL system under control have these (and some other subtle) attributes. What needs to be answered in order to determine to appropriateness of the control system includes:

What is the necessary sample rate needed to properly control the system?

Is the system linear or nonlinear in its response to requests to change?

What is the level of "noise" in the sampled state data, the command data, and the sampling intervals?

There are others, but they're beyond the scope of this post. Here's Where the Critics Go in the DitchOne popular criticism of PMBOK is the conjecture - and it is pure conjecture, since PMBOK makes no statement to this effect - that project management control systems are thermostatic in nature. This criticism of course is meaningless unless you can answer the following questions:

Is the sample rate correct?

Is the response function set right?

Can the system respond in the appropriate manner in the appropriate time frame?

Is the feedback gain set right?

Is the feedback being used in the proper manner?

In the absence of this information and the proper setting of the attributes and variables, any control loop would fail to work properly. This ranges from your simple $10 furnace control to the multi-million $ control loop that landed Phoenix on Mars last night.The ability to write criticism about a topic is nearly boundless. The ability to understand how the fundamental of something works - say a thermostat - may not be as boundless. When the notion that project management is obsolete because it uses the thermostatic model for control is made, statements fall into a class defined by Wolfgang Pauli:

A scientific argument is said to be not even wrong if it is based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, or alternatively theories which cannot be possibly falsified of used to predict anything. Pauli's comment on a paper he was shown by a colleague. "That's not right, It's not even wrong."

That's the starting point for the argument that project management process groups and knowledge areas of PMBOK are obsolete. The authors (which can be found by searching the phrase "project theory management is obsolete" have many other "not even wrong" notions. But the thermostatic is my favorite, having grown up in the software world as a control system programmer for missiles and paper mills.

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The Mis-Misinterpretations of PMBOK

Most of the ragging about PMBOK starts with the misinterpretation of the purpose and content of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. First it is not "The" Body of Knowledge, but "A" Body of Knowledge. Second it is not "The" Body of Knowledge, but a "Guide" to "A" Body of Knowledge. See the trend here. Most authors ragging on PMBOK appear to have trouble reading the title of the book.

Next comes the concept that PMBOK is a project management methodology. That is tells you how to manage a project. This not true. PMBOK is a guide to some good practices that shoudl be found in your project management method.

One simple approach to the application of PMBOK is to ask:

What process groups and knowledge areas would you NOT want to be found in your method of managing projects?

Would you NOT want to know how to do during your project (Knowledge Areas)?

Integrate the activities found in projects. Things like: chartering, preliminary scoping, developing a manage plan, directing and some how managing the project, monitoring and control the project in some way, managing the changes that occur during the project, or closing out the project once its over?

Or how about knowing the ways to: manage scope, manage the time aspects of a project, or the costs of doing the work, or the quality of the products or services produced by the project?

How about the human resource aspects of project work?

Maybe the communications issues associated with projects and the people working on projects?

When risk appears in project work, how about some methods of managing it?

When external materials are needed, wouldn't some good procurement processes be useful?

These are the knowledge areas of PMBOK. The current PMBOK uses a Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle. This provides the framework for managing the project using feedback and corrective action. It has been suggested that the thermostatic approach to project management is obsolete, without of course providing alternative. But more critically those making this suggestion have failed to understand the rudimentary aspects of the theory of control systems:

The system under control has the ability to be controlled in some way

Feedback from the current state of the system is available in some unit of measure useful to the controller. (The controller can be human or machine)

When "commanded" to do so the system can make changes in its behavior in response to the "command." (This command is not a military like command, but an input to the system that alters the output).

Now is when the confusion starts. ALL system under control have these (and some other subtle) attributes. What needs to be answered in order to determine to appropriateness of the control system includes:

What is the necessary sample rate needed to properly control the system?

Is the system linear or nonlinear in its response to requests to change?

What is the level of "noise" in the sampled state data, the command data, and the sampling intervals?

There are others, but they're beyond the scope of this post. Here's Where the Critics Go in the DitchOne popular criticism of PMBOK is the conjecture - and it is pure conjecture, since PMBOK makes no statement to this effect - that project management control systems are thermostatic in nature. This criticism of course is meaningless unless you can answer the following questions:

Is the sample rate correct?

Is the response function set right?

Can the system respond in the appropriate manner in the appropriate time frame?

Is the feedback gain set right?

Is the feedback being used in the proper manner?

In the absence of this information and the proper setting of the attributes and variables, any control loop would fail to work properly. This ranges from your simple $10 furnace control to the multi-million $ control loop that landed Phoenix on Mars last night.The ability to write criticism about a topic is nearly boundless. The ability to understand how the fundamental of something works - say a thermostat - may not be as boundless. When the notion that project management is obsolete because it uses the thermostatic model for control is made, statements fall into a class defined by Wolfgang Pauli:

A scientific argument is said to be not even wrong if it is based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, or alternatively theories which cannot be possibly falsified of used to predict anything. Pauli's comment on a paper he was shown by a colleague. "That's not right, It's not even wrong."

That's the starting point for the argument that project management process groups and knowledge areas of PMBOK are obsolete. The authors (which can be found by searching the phrase "project theory management is obsolete" have many other "not even wrong" notions. But the thermostatic is my favorite, having grown up in the software world as a control system programmer for missiles and paper mills.